


May Death Find You Alive

by blameitonvortices



Series: In which Loki takes over for Odin [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Loki Posing as Odin, Loki-centric, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Tired Loki, complicated family relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 23:24:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blameitonvortices/pseuds/blameitonvortices
Summary: While posing as Odin, Loki gets an unexpected visit from Hela, and gets some unexpected insights.





	May Death Find You Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Author's notes at the end. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, apologies for typos and errors.

Loki swept magisterially into Odin's (his) quarters, keeping up the appearance of power and imperturbability until the doors slammed impressively behind him and the runes he had surreptitiously added (to Odin's own) sealed them doubly, triply shut. 

Then he dropped the glamour that had him wearing his not-father's skin, and sank wearily into a chair. He let his head fall back until it rested on the chair. This mean his neck was stretched a little too far for comfort (he missed sometimes the overstuffed, flimsy chairs the humans made on Midgard. They seemed _designed_ to lean back comfortably in. After a long day of trying to keep the Nine from falling into the Titan's hands, without anyone knowing he was even _fighting_ the Titan and shoving down the shudders that threatened to erupt every time he thought about _him_ , he would have given a fair bit for a chair with head support. Perhaps he could suggest it to Thor as an appropriate gift the next time he visited Asgard. Not as himself, obviously. Perhaps that buxom apprentice of Foster's would be a good disguise. It'd been a while since he had been a woman... 

He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd be holding and conjured a cup of water into his hand. What he wanted was mead, strong and sweet, but he couldn't remember eating anything since breakfast, long long before dawn, so had decided to forebear until he had something actually nourishing. He lifted his head long enough to gulp down the water, realizing as he did just how thirsty he was. How did Odin do it? No wonder there were so many evening feasts. It now seemed to Loki it was the only time the old man could have been certain he could sit still for five minutes together and eat something more than a trail ration. 

He let his head drop back again and closed his eyes (just for a moment, just for a moment). He felt a little of the tension coiled in his shoulders release, spread his fingers over the scroll-work on the armrests, sank just a little deeper in the cushion. 

A sigh whispered past his ears, bringing with it a damp chill, smelling faintly of decay. Loki's eyes shot open and in a moment he was on his feet, daggers in hand, braced for some minion of the Titan come to drag him back to that dead moon.

Instead of some rotten thrall of the Other, stood a tall woman dressed in black, with black hair framing deathly pale face. She smirked. "Didn't Frigga tell you it was rude to greet guests with blades?"

"Hela." Loki relaxed his stance marginally, and slid the knives back into their discreet sheaths. "What do you want?"

"What, no kisses for your mother?" Hela started stalking towards Loki, bringing with her the odor of the grave. 

"What?" Loki had the uncomfortable feeling of being wrong-footed, and he didn't like it. It was one thing when he was the one doing it, another when it had been a long day and now he was getting ridiculous questions from the Mistress of Hel. "No, I'm afraid you have that backwards. One of the previous," he waved a hand vaguely, "me's sired you, Fenrir, and Jormungandr. Ages ago, in a previous cycle...thing" he ended lamely. He knew he needed sleep, but until "cycle thing" came out of his mouth, he didn't realize how _badly_ he needed to sleep. 

"Yes, indeed. And then Laufey sired you on me this cycle. Aren't cyclical universes wonderful?" Hela smiled an unpleasant smile. It was unpleasant in its own right, faintly wolfish, but made all the more unpleasant by its familiarity. Loki had seen that smile on his own face. 

"So, I am my own grandfather?" Loki felt a headache start to throb over his eye. He tried to remember the details of that cycle--not his own memories of course, but from the histories. Had Odin been his father in that one? Brother? No well-defined relation? The writers had not been very careful to distinguish cycles in those days. They noted down the interesting things that happened and foolishly hoped that someone in a later cycle would bother to keep it organized. 

"In a manner of speaking," Hela gazed around the room, her eye lingering a moment on the large bed where Odin slept, concealed by layers of glamour. "If Old Grimnir is in that bed, where do you sleep? When you do sleep, that is."

"In his dressing room. There's been a bed in there as long as anyone can remember; so long as it doesn't look slept in no one notices anything odd. They assume Odin just can't bear to have anything changed. You had a son by Laufey?"

"Mm. You, in fact. Did you never wonder why your Aesir form was as stable, if not more so, as your Jotunn? Or why you were so much smaller and less, mm, spikey in your Jotunn form?" She paused in her examination of the room to look Loki square in the eye. "For that matter, did it never occur to you to wonder who it was gave birth to you, if it wasn't Frigga?"

Loki shrugged, intentionally nonchalant. "I had assumed it was some Jotunn female. Honestly, I didn't give it much thought." And denying Frigga had never seemed quite as pressing as denying Odin, somehow. 

"Frigga is a much better mother than I am, I'm not insulted," said Hela, replying to the thought rather than the words and resuming her too casual inspection of Odin's chamber. "I mean, I left you with Laufey as soon as I was sure I wouldn't have to immediately come get you again. I'm not exactly the maternal type. And Frigga's the All-Mother."

"She's not-"

Hela paused with some bauble half-lifted. "What? No, she died in glorious battle against the dark elves. She's in Valhalla, living the good afterlife."

Relief flooded through Loki. He hadn't doubted that Frigga had gone to Valhalla until Hela had started speaking of her in the present tense. That off his mind, he could return to the pressing issue of _why is the mistress of Hel in my bedroom_. "Pardon my rudeness, it's been rather a long day, why are you here exactly? Suddenly overcome with maternal feeling, were you?"

"Feeling a bit motherless at the moment are you?" Hela returned snide for snide, and then become more somber. "No, this is more of a...business appointment. A certain Mad Titan with an indefatigable and frankly unwanted passion for Death is on his way. I rather like this cycle, I was hoping it wouldn't end quite so soon." She had apparently found a chair to her liking and draped herself in it. 

Loki felt his heart skip a beat at the _oh too casual_ mention of his former master, and only stopped his mouth from dropping open with only a hair's breadth to spare. He bought himself a moment by falling back on pleasantries. 

"Please, make yourself at home. Can I offer you something to drink? Water, mead?"

"Mead, thanks. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get mead to stay mead and not vinegar in Hel." She accepted the cup Loki handed her and drank what seemed to Loki like half its contents in a single gulp. 

Loki sipped his water. "You're looking well. Your face in particular looks better than illustrations in the histories would have me believe."

"Just a glamour." Her face suddenly lost it's beauty, at least on one half. Now it was skeletal, ragged rotten flesh clinging to cheekbone and jaw, the living eye unblinking without an eyelid. In a moment it was gone, and her face seemed whole and wholesome again. "I thought it best not to give the ravens any ideas." 

"Probably wise. They are somewhat restless with the situation as it stands." Over on the bed posts, Huginn ruffled his feathers irritably. Loki slowly swirled the water in his cup, just to give his hands something to do. "So you know about the Titan."

"Oh yes. He's been trying to woo me for eons. Can't seem to take 'no' for an answer. Also doesn't seem understand that I don't need more death. I had to start a bureaucracy in Hel millennia ago to handle arrivals and I've had to institute a separate bureaucracy just for dealing with his nonsense." She too swirled the mead in her cup and traced some intricate inlaid woodwork on the table next to her. 

"So you know what the Titan has been doing in your name." Loki said it flatly, trying to betray none of the sudden sense of betrayal that was welling up in his chest. "You know how many worlds he has sacrificed to you."

"Yes, I knew what he was doing to you." Hela's habit of answering the unspoken question was deeply unsettling. "If it was in my power to stop him, I would have long before he got his hands on you. And enlightening him as to our relationship would not likely have eased your suffering. I can keep you from dying, not from suffering."

"So it's you I have to thank for surviving the Void? And the Titan's hospitality? The Dark World?" It had bothered him, how he kept managing to survive things that should have killed him. Especially when he hadn't wanted to survive.

"In brief: somewhat, no, and no. To be less brief: being of both Jotunn and Aesir heritage would seem to give you some survival advantages, I simply didn't 'call your number' as the humans say. The Titan is very good at killing, which means he's also very, very good at making you suffer without getting anywhere near death. As for the Dark World, you died in battle for the Nine, you were never coming to me. I just lent some extra authority to Frigga's arguments that you should live. Not that she really needs more authority, but it never hurts when dealing with Valkyries."

"What do you want with me, Hela?" Another time, he might have enjoyed this conversation. Learning more about his origins. About the history of the Nine from someone who lives through the death and rebirth of the universe. Perhaps uncovering some powers he didn't know he possessed. Hearing about Frigga. But right now, he wished he could drink until the flashes of memory of his time on that accursed moon were drowned blurs. But getting that drunk takes a lot of mead for a god, and he couldn't let his guard down that much. So he'd settle for whatever sleep he could eek out of the remains of the night.

Hela smiled a saccharine smile that went no where near her eyes. "Can't a mother stop by to see how her only son is doing?"

Loki's lips twitched in a brief sardonic smile and he let out a short bark of a laugh. "You know, that'd be a lot more convincing if this weren't the first time in over a millenium."

"Yes, I suppose that's true." Hela tossed back her mead and threw the cup on the floor in a manner, Loki thought, Thor would have approved of pre-Midgard banishment. "No, I'm here to ensure Thanos ceases to be a thorn in my side. And I get to get my thorn into his." The glamour dropped and the lupine grin leered from the nightmare face. "Eternally."

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a post on the marvel studios subreddit that had a promotional picture of Hela and Loki, and the poster theorizing "Mother and son?" which led to a thread about Loki's very confused parentage and parenting. From that, I somehow got the idea of Hela being both Loki's daughter and mother because why not. The story wouldn't leave me alone, so I wrote it out in the hopes it would get it out of my system. Instead it seems to have spawned a whole little AU in my brain, which I may or may not indulge.
> 
> Title is taken from Fall Out Boy's "Uma Thurman"


End file.
